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Deflector shield
The deflector shields or screens usually referred to as just shields, are a type of force fields that surround a starship, space station, or planet to protect against enemy attack or natural hazard. Operation and Use starship's secondary hull]] starship's primary hull]] starship]] Weapons fire, either energy or projectile-based, normally cannot directly penetrate a shield, without first matching the exact shield frequency. Continuous or extremely powerful weapons fire, can however progressively dissipate the integrity of a shield to the point of failure. Normally transporters are not capable of penetrating shields. (TOS: "Arena") There are at least two different shield configurations: One type projects an ellipsoid shield bubble around the ship and a relatively large region directly adjacent to the ship. In the other shield configuration a contour-conforming shield layer is projected a few meters outside the main hull. The former is the only type commonly seen in use during the 24th century. (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; Star Trek: Nemesis) :*''The ellipsoid shield configuration isn't seen until 24th century; presumably it is more effective than its counterpart. Though, shield harmonics can be adjusted to change the shape of shields of the 24th century, it is unclear if ships could produce both shield configurations.’’ :*''It is of note, that during Operation Return none of the ships appeared to be using shields. Though shields were mentioned on at least two occasions, all weapons fire appeared to directly strike the hull (presumably this is a production error). (DS9: "Sacrifice of Angels")'' Among the different types of shields are the standard type which allow both phaser and photon torpedoes to be fired but will not allow any transporter activity. Another type of shield will allow photon torpedoes and transporters to be used, but will not allow phasers to be fired. (TOS: "A Taste of Armageddon"). One type of shield was capable of sustaining the energy of ninety photon torpedoes, although it would appear that this type of shield was a failure because it was not used often. (TOS: "The Changeling") It takes time to activate a deflector shield. Constitution-class starships needs exactly 15.5 seconds to lower and raise their shields when taking a shuttlecraft onboard via its tractor beam. (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier) It is possible for a starship to have only certain areas of the ship shielded, leaving other areas un-protected. This would be useful in times when power reserves were low, and only certain areas could be shielded. This was also useful to Captain Janeway on the [[USS Voyager|USS Voyager]], when she wished to extract information from a renegade crewman concerning the whereabouts of Captain Ransom in 2375. In this instance, she lowered the shields around a cargo bay, with the crewman inside, to allow the nucleogenic creatures to attack him. Additionally, a vessel can extend their shields around another vessel by matching shield emitter frequencies. (VOY: "Equinox, Part II") Lowering portions of the shields also allows usage of transporters without completely sacrificing the protection that shields provide. The type of deflector shield used by the Lysian Central Command had an output of 4.3 kilojoules and could have easily been taken out with a single photon torpedo. (TNG: "Conundrum") :To give further perspective to the Federation's 24th century encounter with the Lysians, the phase cannons as found on the Enterprise NX were rated for 500 gigajoules, suggesting that the 24th century Lysians were significantly behind even 22nd century Starfleet technology. (ENT: "Silent Enemy") :See also: Military technology Shield types *covariant shield *immersive shielding *metaphasic shield *multi-adaptive shield *multiphasic shield *parametric shield *regenerative shield *temporal shield *unimatrix shield de:Schutzschild Category:Weapons